Jeri brings up another example, that of Louisa and Rosa Tebbs, and Nenia Lovesey, that shows a linkage between the early 20th century lace boom and the one in the 1970s. My sense is that there were just enough people left over from the early 20th century lace enterprises to seed the 1970s lace revival. Earlier someone mentioned the Winslow industries. In Denmark, according to the book Pomp & Poetry, there was a Weaving Workshop that was established in the early Twentieth Century, which included lacemaking.
The article by Andrea Plum, which is very short and not oriented toward lace, does not mention this as a factor. But, it has come out in a number of these personal reminiscences. That there actually was a large pool of people who had learned lacemaking as part of largely unsuccessful profit making enterprises in the early 20th century is an interesting thing. When the Burano lace industry was started after the bad winter of 1872, they had to locate an old woman who had made lace earlier in her life when it was still a viable craft. This was the elderly, illiterate Cencia Scarpariola. Is it a pattern? Just when it looks like it is dying out it is rediscovered? Devon - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
